Underpaid rents

[Roy Sloan]

I have a five bedroom property rented to college student in New Jersey. The lease has all five tenants names on it. One tenant moved out without notice and the remaining tenants don’t want to pay the whole rent, just 4/5 ths as they feel I should be going after the 5th tenant for the balance. My options are to enforce the lease and evict, sue and try to recover the money owed me or renegotiate and bite the bullet until next May taking a $3000 loss. Any advice from New Jersey landlords would be greatly appreciated.

[Cal C.]

Your lease should say Joint and Several or something else along those lines which means that all tenants are responsible as one entity.  All five of the tenants should be responsible for paying the rent in full.  With parents as co-signers then you have ~10-15 people  who are responsible for paying the whole rent amount.  Why in the world would you compromise?